Catholic Commentary
Joseph's Obedience and the Naming of Jesus
24Joseph arose from his sleep, and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, and took his wife to himself;25and didn’t know her sexually until she had given birth to her firstborn son. He named him Jesus.
Matthew 1:24–25 describes Joseph's obedient response to the angel's command: he takes Mary as his wife and refrains from sexual relations until after Jesus's birth, then names the child Jesus, legally establishing him as his son and heir of David. Joseph's immediate and unquestioning compliance with God's word, exemplified in his naming of the child, integrates Jesus into Israel's covenant history and royal lineage.
Joseph wakes from sleep and obeys without hesitation—his immediate yes to God's command, not his bloodline, makes him the father who legally anchors the Son of God into human history.
Matthew 1:24 — "Joseph arose from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him"
Matthew's phrasing is deliberately spare and almost liturgical in its rhythm. The verb "arose" (Greek egertheís, an aorist passive participle) carries a resonance that Matthew will deploy again at the Resurrection (28:6–7): rising in response to a divine summons. That Joseph acts immediately — there is no deliberation, no further consultation, no delay — sets the narrative tone for his character throughout the Infancy Narrative. He is the silent, swift executor of God's word, the supreme model of what Matthew's Gospel elsewhere calls the "disciple" who hears and acts (7:24–27).
The phrase "did as the angel of the Lord commanded him" echoes Old Testament obedience formulae, most notably the refrain used of Noah ("Noah did all that God commanded him," Gen 6:22) and of Abraham. Like those great patriarchal figures, Joseph's obedience is not passive capitulation but an active, costly choice: he is accepting a role that defies social convention and personal expectation. To "take his wife to himself" (parélaben tēn gynaika autou) is the technical verb for the completion of the Jewish betrothal rite — the act of bringing the bride into one's home. By performing this act, Joseph publicly acknowledges the child as his own under the Law. This is of immense theological consequence: it is precisely through this legal act that Jesus of Nazareth is, before the Law and before history, "son of David" (1:1, 20).
Matthew 1:25 — "and didn't know her sexually until she had given birth to her firstborn son"
The phrase "did not know her" is the Semitic idiom for sexual relations (cf. Gen 4:1). The word héōs ("until") has generated enormous exegetical debate. In Greek, héōs followed by an aorist does not grammatically imply that the opposite condition obtained after the temporal boundary — a point demonstrated abundantly in classical and biblical usage (cf. 2 Sam 6:23; Matt 28:20, "I am with you always, until the end of the age"). The Catholic Church, guided by the consistent witness of the Fathers and defined dogmatically at the Lateran Council (649 AD) and reaffirmed at the Second Council of Constantinople, teaches that Mary remained ever-virgin — before, during, and after the birth of Christ (aeiparthenos). St. Jerome's classic refutation of Helvidius (Adversus Helvidium, 383 AD) dismantled the argument from "until" as a grammatical misreading, and demonstrated that the "brothers of the Lord" (referenced elsewhere in Matthew) are either cousins or sons of Joseph from a prior marriage.
The word "firstborn" (prōtotokos) is equally significant. In Jewish law, prōtotokos was a legal and cultic category — the firstborn son who "opens the womb" belongs to the LORD and must be consecrated (Ex 13:2, 12; Lk 2:23). The title does not imply subsequent children; it identifies Jesus as the one who holds the Levitical dignity of consecration to God. Luke will draw this out explicitly at the Presentation in the Temple.
The final clause — "He named him Jesus" — is the act of naming that closes the literary bracket opened at 1:21 ("you shall call his name Jesus"). In the ancient world, and especially in the Jewish tradition, naming conferred identity and destiny. The name Yēshua (Joshua) means "YHWH saves." By naming the child, Joseph formally adopts him into the house of David, anchoring the Incarnate Word within the covenant history of Israel. The act of naming is Joseph's supreme priestly and paternal gesture — it is through his word, uttered in obedience to God's word, that the Savior receives his human identity before the world.
Catholic tradition illuminates this passage at several distinct levels that no merely historical-critical reading can exhaust.
On the Virgin Birth and Perpetual Virginity: The Catechism of the Catholic Church (§§ 496–507) treats the virginal conception as a historical truth affirmed by the Creeds and insists that it "sheds light on the person of Christ and his saving mission." The virgin birth is not simply a biological marvel but a theological sign: it reveals that Jesus has no human father because his Father is God (CCC 503). Mary's perpetual virginity (CCC 499–507) is described as a sign of her "undivided gift of herself to God" and of her "singular union" with Christ. St. Augustine (De Virginitate 4) sees in her virginity the archetype of the Church's own consecration to Christ as a spotless bride.
On Joseph's legal paternity: Pope St. John Paul II's Redemptoris Custos (1989) provides the most developed magisterial treatment of Joseph's role. The Pope insists (§§ 1–3) that Joseph's act of naming constitutes a genuine, real, and juridically effective fatherhood — not a fiction or a legal technicality, but a true participation in the mystery of the Incarnation. Joseph is "the guardian of the mystery of God" precisely because, through his obedience, the eternal Son becomes embedded in human and covenantal history.
On obedience as a form of worship: St. Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologiae III, q. 29, a. 2) argues that Joseph's custody of Mary and the Child was itself an act of providential wisdom ordained by God to protect the mysteries of the Incarnation from premature exposure and to provide a human family structure for the formation of the Son of Man. Joseph's silent, immediate obedience is, for Aquinas, the perfection of the virtue of religion — rendering to God what is owed by doing exactly what God wills, when God wills it.
Joseph's obedience in verse 24 is structurally simple and spiritually demanding: he receives a word from God in a moment of vulnerable sleep, and upon waking he acts — without recorded protest, without negotiation, without waiting for further confirmation. For a contemporary Catholic, this poses a pointed challenge. In an age that prizes deliberation, self-actualization, and the careful weighing of personal cost before commitment, Joseph's response reads almost as a rebuke. He does not first consult his reputation, his plans, or his comfort.
The spiritual application is concrete: when God's call comes through prayer, through Scripture, through the voice of a confessor or spiritual director, through an undeniable interior prompting — the question Joseph's example poses is not whether to obey, but how quickly. Delay in obedience is often a form of disobedience dressed in the language of prudence.
Additionally, Joseph's act of naming Jesus calls every Catholic parent, godparent, and sponsor to reflect on the weight of naming — not merely as a social custom, but as a covenantal act that shapes identity. To name a child for a saint, to pray that name daily, to form a child in the meaning of that name, is to participate in the same pattern of faithful stewardship that Joseph models here.
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